I was against the Affordable Care Act (I won't call it Obamacare, that's just stupid and unnecessary.) from the beginning (Mostly because it was unconstitutional and it would and turned out did cause too many Unintended Consequences.), but I could certainly understand the arguments and reasons for it. But I still find it absolutely hilarious that one of (If not THE.) the biggest arguments for it was because they "Make us."get auto insurance. That one came up a lot (I have a friend who is a big Liberal/Democrats. He's smart and even HE was using that argument,). As if the two of them had anything to do with each other. Do people really not understand the foolishness of that argument?

The individual mandates goal was to get people to buy insurance or face a penalty.

One can make an argument that the mandate has not worked as well as expected based on CBO projections. Was that because of the politization of the law and many choosing to just pay the penalty or because paying the penalty is cheaper in some cases? Are some just lying that thye have it when they do not?

Anyway, to the numbers. The number of people without insurance has gone down under the ACA. So, under that measure the argument is not stupid at all it is a reality.

That said, premium costs, deductibles remain problematic. For different reasons than some care to bring up. Insurance covers more by default now. Making things somewhat more expensive. On the exchanges subsidies help with this but elsewhere not always and Trump is doing his darndest to undermine all the cost mitigation factors to hurt people more.

It was also found to be Constitutional by a pretty conservative SCOTUS. So the argument that it is not is fairly moot at this point. Does not mean everything the SCOTUS says is the absolute truth, as they have been wrong, but they made the right call on that one.

Honestly, even before the ACA the healthcare system, or rather insurance system, in the US was and is something of a joke. If you do not have a jobe that offers insurance than you are left to your own devices and have to get plans that do not cover much fo anything at all. That there was not really much government involvement for most American's in any way was a joke.

Seems like there should be some sort of safety net program that helps people if they fall through. One could argue that medicaid would do that, but given the restrictions on that, it is easy to not qualify.

One issue I have is...the people that put this through. EXEMPTED themselves from this very plan. How can that NOT be suspect?